‘Saccharine’ review: Hunger pains

Writer/director Natalie Erika James shows the horrors of diet culture in the murky, but still spooky Saccharine.

Working out is hard work. Eating right can be exhausting. The pursuit of perfect health can lead to unhealthy habits. For all the damage one can do to their body with junk food, there are some methods of staying fit that are actually harmful. Even aggressive affirmations of body positivity can be warped into shaming those with deeper struggles than a healthy diet. The biggest struggle can be one’s own reflection, how they see themselves no matter what the scale says. Sometimes it looks good, but there might be something scarier creeping closer and closer. At least that’s what Natalie Erika James wants her audience to see in Saccharine.

Hana (Midori Francis) is a lonely medical student in a near-endless cycle of binge eating, throwing food away, trying to sweat it out at the gym, then going back to snacking. Cutting open bloated cadavers for in-class examinations doesn’t help her body image issues either. Then she meets an old friend who lost a ton of weight and looks like a model. Her secret? An unlicensed diet pill that helps her keep pounds down while still eating whatever she wants. Hana tries it and gets good results, but still wonders how it works. After a lab test, she discovers it has the same chemical compounds of human ash.

It’s a shocking discovery, but more shocking is that Hana doesn’t just stop taking the pills; she makes her own batch from the cadaver she’s been working on at school. The results are miraculous, so much so that she eventually doesn’t need her “medicine” anymore. Yet she keeps losing weight no matter how much she eats. Worse, she keeps seeing horrifying things in the night and in certain reflections.

Eyes of the beholder.

Photo Credit: IFC Entertainment Group

A lot of Saccharine is ugly on purpose. Writer/director Natalie Erika James purposely frames Hana’s eating habits as a gross disease with close-ups of her face as she scarfs down donuts and candy and such. More so, James and cinematographer Charlie Sarroff (Smile 2) shoot almost everything in Hana’s life to look like a faded, grimy nightmare. Everything from the gym to love scenes have a low-lit, slightly dirty vision to it. An understandable creative decision given the themes, but it does warrant comparisons to the gorgeous visual style of Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance and how that heightens the ugliness of modern beauty culture. With Saccharine, the lighting and the color scheme (and the generic score) make it look like the movie is trying too hard to present it as a horror film.

It also makes a smoothie out of its influences. Saccharine was described before its festival screening as The Substance meets It Follows. It definitely harkens back to the latter with the creeping presence of what Hana is eating, figuratively and literally. The way James creates an effectively haunting physical manifestation of the mental anguish in the mind of someone weight loss problems is one of the many clever aspects of the film. James makes good use out of warped reflections Hana can’t take her eyes off of, or empty space in the corner of her eye waiting for something to lunge at her. Though not as fresh as It Follows, or most of the best ghost story movies, but Saccharine is effectively creepy on top of its pointed commentary on modern diet culture, body positivity, and how that can stem from family trauma.

Carry that weight.

Francis has a lot to carry throughout the movie. For one, she has to sport some really odd body prosthetics to simulate Hana’s heavier appearance. The facial makeup is hard to get used to, nothing egregious but not quite breaking through the uncanny valley into believability. Thankfully she only wears it for the first 30 minutes or so and it lets the audience focus on her strong performance. She projects Hana’s timidness very well and wears fear on her face with skill. The way she chomps down food to keep the evil spirits away conveys both fear and rage, adding to the layered nature of the story. Even as the movie loses its subtle edge near the end, Francis carries it over the finish line.

Photo Credit: IFC Entertainment Group

But the real driving force of Saccharine is James’ storytelling. She covers almost every harmful aspect of modern health culture. Whether Hana is making positive diet choices by throwing away sweets and committing to a rigorous workout plan, or scarfing down food feeling invincible from her new pill, James frames it as a constant battle. Though there’s a supernatural threat, Hana also faces pressure from her peers to embrace her body, reminders from her family of how weight problems can cripple her, and the barrage of body positivity content on social media. Saccharine is a fitting title, given how James throws too much at Hana to send her spiraling on her journey.

The bottom line.

Saccharine is a solid mixture of body horror and satire of body standards. It’s not the most original smoothie onscreen, but it has more than enough creepy moments to make it memorable. In a world where the rules of health are constantly put into question, it helps to be reminded of how extreme measures can lead to horrifying results.

Saccharine is now playing in select theaters. Watch the trailer here.

Images courtesy of IFC Entertainment Group. Read more articles by Jon Winkler here.

Jon Winkler